Books of the Bible

Different religious groups include different books in their Biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books, or incorporate additional material into canonical books. Christian Bibles range from the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon to the eighty-one books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon.

The Tanakh contains twenty-four books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah ("teaching"); the Nevi'im ("prophets"); and the Ketuvim ("writings"). The first part of Christian Bibles is called the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the above twenty-four books but divided into thirty-nine books and ordered differently, sometimes also called the Hebrew Bible.

The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches also hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The second part is the New Testament, containing twenty-seven books; the four Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation.

The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches may have minor differences in their lists of accepted books. The list given here for these churches is the most inclusive: if at least one Eastern church accepts the book it is included here.

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Hebrew Bible

Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the 24 books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, as authoritative. Evidence suggests that the process of canonization occurred between 200 BCE and 200 CE. A popular former theory is that the Torah was canonized c. 400 BCE, the Prophets c. 200 BCE, and the Writings c. 100 CE, perhaps at a hypothetical Council of Jamnia, but this position is increasingly rejected by most modern scholars.

Christian Old Testament

Protestants and Catholics use the Masoretic Text as the textual basis for their translations of the protocanonical books (those accepted as canonical by both Jews and all Christians), with various changes derived from a multiplicity of other ancient sources (such as the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.), while generally using the Septuagint and Vulgate, now supplemented by the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, as the textual basis for the deuterocanonical books.

The Eastern Orthodox use the Septuagint as the textual basis for the entire Old Testament in both protocanonical and deuteroncanonical booksâ€"to use both in the Greek for liturgical purposes, and as the basis for translations into the vernacular. Most of the quotations (300 of 400) of the Old Testament in the New Testament, while differing more or less from the version presented by the Masoretic text, align with that of the Septuagint.

Intertestamental books

The intertestamental books, largely written during the intertestamental period, are called the Biblical apocrypha ("hidden things") by Protestants, the deuterocanon ("second canon") by Catholics, and the deuterocanon or anagignoskomena ("worthy of reading") by Orthodox. These are works recognized by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches as being part of scripture (and thus deuterocanonical rather than apocryphal), but Protestants do not recognize them as divinely inspired. Orthodox differentiate scriptural books by omitting these (and others) from corporate worship and from use as a sole basis for doctrine.

Many other Christians recognize them as good, but not on the level of the other books of the Bible. Anglicanism considers the apocrypha "read for example of life" but not used "to establish any doctrine." Luther made a parallel statement in calling them: "not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read."

The difference in canons derives from the difference in the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. Books found in both the Hebrew and the Greek are accepted by all denominations, and by Jews, these are the protocanonical books. Catholics and Orthodox also accept those books present in manuscripts of the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament with great currency among the Jews of the ancient world, with the coda that Catholics consider 3 Esdras and 3 Maccabees apocryphal.

Most quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament, differing by varying degrees from the Masoretic Text, are taken from the Septuagint. When the Jews closed the Old Testament canon, two criteria were used, that the book be written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and that it be no younger than the time of Ezra. This process led to the 24/39 books of the Tanakh and Old Testament. (However, Daniel was written several hundred years after the time of Ezra, and since that time several books of the Septuagint have been found in the original Hebrew, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Cairo Geniza, and at Masada, including a Hebrew text of Sirach (Qumran, Masada) and an Aramaic text of Tobit (Qumran); the additions to Esther and Daniel are also in their respective Semitic languages.)

The unanimous consensus of modern (and ancient) scholars consider several other books, including 1 Maccabees and Judith, to have been composed in Hebrew or Aramaic. Opinion is divided on the book of Baruch, while it is acknowledged that the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, and 2 Maccabees are originally Greek compositions.

1 Esdras/3 Esdras

2 Esdras/4 Esdras

Tobit

Judith

Additions to Esther

Wisdom of Solomon

Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)

Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah

Song of the Three Young Men and Prayer of Azariah

Story of Susanna

Bel and the Dragon

Prayer of Manasseh

1 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

Eastern Orthodox

Additional books accepted by the Eastern Orthodox:

3 Esdras

4 Esdras (in an appendix to the Slavonic Bible)

3 Maccabees

4 Maccabees (in an appendix to the Greek Bible)

Psalm 151 (in the Septuagint)

Syrian Orthodox

Additional books accepted by the Syrian Orthodox (due to inclusion in the Peshitta):

2 Baruch with the Letter of Baruch (only the letter has achieved canonical status)

Psalms 152â€"155 (not canonical)

Ethiopian Orthodox

The Ethiopian Tewahedo church accepts all of the deuterocanonical books of Catholicism and anagignoskomena of Eastern Orthodoxy except for the four Books of Maccabees. It accepts the 24/39 books of the Masoretic Text along with the following books, called the "narrow canon". The enumeration of books in the Ethiopic Bible varies greatly between different authorities and printings.

4 Baruch or the Paralipomena of Jeremiah

1 Enoch

Jubilees

1 Meqabyan

2 Meqabyan

3 Meqabyan

The Ethiopian broader Biblical Canon

Table

The table uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Bible, such as the New American Bible Revised Edition, Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version. The spelling and names in both the 1609â€"1610 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament) and the 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions that derive from the Hebrew Masoretic text.

For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For the Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah).

In the spirit of ecumenism more recent Catholic translations (e.g., the New American Bible, Jerusalem Bible, and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g., 1 Chronicles, as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings, instead of 1-4 Kings) in those books universally considered canonicalâ€"the protocanonicals.

The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim. This order is also quoted in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah are universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity.

The disputed books, included in one canon but not in others, are often called the Biblical apocrypha, a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe the books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), use the traditional name of anagignoskomena, meaning "that which is to be read." They are present in a few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version.

Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon.

Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate, formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

New Testament

In general, among Christian denominations, the New Testament canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books, although book order can vary. The book order is the same in the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant tradition. The Slavonic, Armenian and Ethiopian traditions have different New Testament book orders.

Chart notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Four New Testament works were questioned or "spoken against" by Martin Luther, and he changed the order of his New Testament to reflect this, but he did not leave them out, nor has any Lutheran body since. Traditional German "Luther Bibles" are still printed with the New Testament in this changed "Luther Bible" order.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f The Peshitta, the traditional Syriac Bible, excludes 2 Peter, 2â€"3 John, Jude, and Revelation, but Bibles of the modern Syriac Orthodox Church include later translations of those books. Still today the lectionary followed by the Syrian Orthodox Church, present lessons from only the twenty-two books of Peshitta.
^ See Rabbinical translations of Matthew. Most modern scholars consider the Gospel of Matthew to have been composed in Koine Greek, see Language of the New Testament. According to tradition as expressed by Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the late first or early second centuries, the Gospel was originally composed in the "Hebrew dialect" (which at the time was largely the related Aramaic) and then translated into Greek (Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History", 3.39.15-16; Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30:3). According to Jerome, Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew were extant while he was translating the Vulgate: "MatthewÂ ... composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea, which Pamphilus so diligently gathered (St Jerome, "On Illustrious Men", Chapter 3).

Diagram of the development of the Old Testament

Notes

External links

Old Testament Reading Room & New Testament Reading Room: Extensive online resources for biblical studies (Tyndale Seminary)
The Canon of Scripture â€" a Catholic perspective
Table of Tanakh Books â€" includes Latin, English, Hebrew and abbreviated names (from Tel Aviv University).
Judaica Press Translation â€" Online Jewish translation of the books of the Bible. The Tanakh and Rashi's entire commentary.
(Old Church Slavonic) Slavonic Bible
Books of the Apocrypha (from the UMC)
Western Armenian Bible (an essay, with full official canon at the end)
H. Schumacher, The Canon of the New Testament (London 1923), pp.Â 84â€"94.

Books of the Bible

Jumat, 06 Maret 2015